


Lover Is Childlike

by sakurakyouko



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23153590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakurakyouko/pseuds/sakurakyouko
Summary: Remus shut the textbook he had been pretending to read and sat up in his four-poster bed, cross-legged. “When did you know you were in love with Lily?”Remus is pining and he seeks the professional opinion of James Potter. A mistake, really.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 138





	Lover Is Childlike

**Author's Note:**

> possible content warning for references to past sexual harassment, and brief reference to past bullying against another student. the sexual harassment is condemned within the narrative, but the bullying is not 100%
> 
> title taken from the song "lover is childlike" by the low anthem, from that sickass hunger games album. the song is way more serious than this fic

Remus bit his lip and decided to bite the bullet. “Hey James?”

The wild-haired boy perked up, easily shoving aside the Potions essay he had been slaving over. He must have been more desperate for a distraction from the tedium of schoolwork than Remus had thought. “Yeah, Moony?”

Remus shut the textbook he had been pretending to read and sat up in his four-poster bed, cross-legged. “When did you know you were in love with Lily?” he asked with a false air of nonchalance.

James raised an eyebrow at him. “I never thought I’d see the day where you’d ask me to ramble about Lily. Usually you lot are all begging me to stop,” he snorted. “But I would never pass up a chance to extol the virtues of my one true love, so you are in luck, my furry friend.”

The brunette screwed up his nose at that particular moniker, but made no move to protest further.

“It was love at first sight,” James sighed wistfully as he dangled his legs off the side of his bed. “I saw that flash of red hair from across the room and I was done for! But of course Lily didn’t like me all that much at first…” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, I had some work to do. Character development, if you will. But what’s love without a few compromises, am I right, Moony?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Remus said wryly. “But that wasn’t my question. When did you well and truly  _ know _ , that it was more than a--” he flapped a hand, “a passing fancy?”

James tilted his head at that and hummed; his messy black hair flopped over his eyes, and he pushed it back as suave as ever. “I reckon that would be the tail end of fifth year, then. After we-- you know, made an ass out of Snape. Well, we always make Snape look like an ass, and he does a fair job of that himself, too. You remember what I’m talking about, though, right? After one of our OWLs?”

Remus remembered the incident well. He felt a tad guilty at being a bystander while James and Sirius quite literally hexed the pants off Snape. The Slytherin had taken the opportunity to spout a slur at Lily in the midst of it, though, so all things considered, he didn’t feel  _ too  _ bad about it. “How could I forget?”

James grimaced. “Right. Well, Lily calling me an arrogant toerag was the push I needed to buck up and stop being such a prick,” he reflected. “If I wanted her to love me back, I had to make myself into somebody worth loving. Someone who would respect her boundaries and let the relationship move along on her terms, not mine."

“There were plenty of girls falling over themselves to chase after you even when you were being a shit,” Remus mused. “How different the world would be now, if you'd taken the easy way out and given up on Lily."

James burst out into raucous laughter. “Me? Give up on Lily?” He barked out another laugh, got to his feet, and threw his arms out emphatically. "Have you gone mad? When have you ever known me to give up on  _ anything? _ ”

Remus pondered silently for a moment and snorted. “Alright, point taken. You are relentless to a fault.”

James nodded and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Anyway, yeah. I knew I loved her for real when I was willing to improve myself for her. Change for the better." Then he looked suspiciously at Remus over the round frames of his glasses. “Why are you so curious about me and Lily’s epic love story, anyhow?” he inquired. “In all the years I’ve known you, not  _ once  _ have you willingly brought this upon yourself. I even seem to recall a time when you stuffed tissues in your ears to escape my love poetry for her!”

“She was doing the same thing, mind.” Remus had actually passed her the tissues.

“Not the point!” James approached Remus’s bed and hit him with his own pillow. “Has our ickle Moony found himself lovestruck and longing for a girl?”

“No,” Remus denied the accusation, though he shifted uncomfortably as he thought of Sirius’s gorgeous gray eyes. “I’ve had plenty of crushes before, though. It would hardly be a big deal even if I _had_ fallen in love.” James opened his mouth to retort, but Remus swiftly cut him off. “And you of all people shouldn’t be able to talk! Your pining is a public menace, Head Boy. I spent actual years of my life listening to you wax poetic about Lily’s-- Merlin, what was it-- her _firewhisky hair?_ ”

James smacked him with the pillow again and pouted. “Admittedly that wasn’t my best work.”

“Quite bold of you to imply that any of your literary ventures were remotely passable,” Remus replied matter-of-factly.

“Hey, now, we don't have to rehash old arguments," James implored. "We both know you're right. I was a prick and my poetry was rubbish.”

"Worse than rubbish, honestly," Remus deadpanned. "A dumpster fire if I've ever seen one."

James opened his mouth to reply, but he stopped himself, then, and started laughing once more. “Oh, you nearly had me for a minute there. I almost took your bait, but you won’t get me off the scent that easily, Moony! Mark my words, I  _ will  _ find out who you’re pining for this time.”

“You’ve never done it before,” Remus pointed out coolly, “and I wouldn’t expect you to succeed  _ now _ all of a sudden.” He reached for his book where it sat on the bed, but James plopped himself down beside him and snatched it away.

James jabbed a finger at him with a delighted grin and a wicked look in his eyes. “So you admit you’re pining!”

“You know, it’s funny, I don’t think I said anything of the sort.”

Suddenly there was a loud bang as the door swung open and revealed Sirius, who had just kicked it in, and Peter, who stood several feet behind him. “Guess who just got back from detention?” Sirius crowed as he kicked in the door. Last year, he and Peter had taken the fall for putting frogspawn soap in random goblets at dinner, so that hundreds of amphibians would appear when the house elves magically filled people’s beverages. Remus had actually been the one to plant the soap there, but that was beside the matter. The point was, the punishment was such that it carried on through the new school year.

Peter strolled in and shut the door quietly behind himself and Sirius, then sat down at the foot of Remus’s bed and stared at him expectantly. By contrast, Sirius launched himself onto the bed with a flying leap, propped his head up on his hands, and fixed the brunette with his signature puppy eyes. “Fill me in,” he demanded. “What’d we miss while we were polishing silver?”

Remus shoved James onto the floor and tossed a pillow at him. “James is just reading too much into what I say,” he stated plainly. “I asked him a simple question and now he’s convinced himself of things that are blatantly untrue.”

“Ohhh?” Sirius waggled his eyebrows. “Could this perhaps be about Moony’s little crush?”

Remus nearly choked. Had Sirius found him out? He hadn’t been  _ that _ obvious, had he?

“Moony's got a crush?” Peter parroted. Remus kicked him and he gaped back at the brunette. “You  _ do! _ ”

“I never said that!” he insisted.

“Oh, Moony, the look on your face says it all,” James teased, crawling over to the bed again and hauling himself back up. He put a supportive hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Come on, spill. Who do you fancy? We won’t judge you.”

“Actually, we’ll definitely judge you,” Sirius corrected, sitting up and patting Remus’s other shoulder. Then he let out a whine as James elbowed him in the side. “What? It’s true! We’ll be very tasteful about it, though, like we’re critiquing a work of fine art.”

“Fine art like your tacky pinup posters?” Remus disapprovingly eyed the torn-out magazine pages of scantily clad women that Sirius had Spellotaped to the wall by his four-poster.

“Precisely!”

Remus rolled his eyes. “Dream on,” he huffed. “I’m not holding a candle for anyone. And even if I were, I wouldn’t want to tell you with the way you’re acting.”

“How are we acting?” Peter sniffed.

Remus crossed his arms. “You’re being nosy. Too persistent for your own good.”

“It’s only in our nature,” James quipped, but he backed off nonetheless, returning to his own bed to finish that paper. He reclined against the wall and rustled the parchment theatrically. “You seem to have forgotten,” he added without looking up, “that I have Gryffindor’s brightest mind on my side now. So even if I can’t track down your mystery crush, I’m sure she will.”

“I resent that,” Sirius protested. “I’ve got a very bright mind, wouldn’t you know?”

“Don’t worry, Padfoot,” Peter offered, “you still have Gryffindor’s shiniest hair.”

Sirius gasped. “There’s more to me than this beautiful face, you git! It's a curse!"

“It’s a good thing I mentioned your hair, then,” Peter hummed, “and not your face.”

“It’s true. Lily has you beat in  _ that _ department any day of the week,” James chimed in, barely glancing away from his work.

Sirius pouted. “I’m using the Black family inheritance to take you two to court.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Peter retorted. Remus kicked Peter again and he let out an affronted noise.

“Off,” Remus ordered. “Both of you. Go bicker somewhere else or do your own bloody homework..”

Peter complied, but he dragged his feet as he resigned himself to doing his homework. Sirius stubbornly stayed put. “You wouldn’t kick out your good friend Sirius Black, would you?”

Remus stared straight at him for a long moment, his heart thumping hard against his ribcage. Sirius made for a pretty picture with those stormy gray eyes and pouting lips, his normally pristine hair all mussed up, and his pale skin flushed from rushing back to Gryffindor Tower.

Remus responded as one customarily does when confronted by a troublesome friend: by smothering him with a pillow.

Sirius thrashed about and squawked, “Alright, alright, get off me! I’m going!” Remus leaned back and relented, dropping the pillow back into its rightful place, but the other boy flashed him a shit-eating grin. “I lied.”

Remus didn’t hesitate to wrestle him out of the bed and toss him onto the floor. Sirius stayed lying there in a heap, sulking like a wounded puppy, but the brunette held firm.

“ _ Homework _ ,” he pressed.

“Did it all last night,” Sirius informed him sullenly; he dropped his head down on the edge of the bed, doglike, and the pout came back in full force. “I’m bored. Entertain me with tales of your love life.”

Oh, Remus could think of a few ways to entertain him, alright. Instead, he let out a sigh and rolled over, resolutely ignoring his friend.

“Oi, Pads, shut the hell up,” James scolded him. “Some of us have work to do even if you don’t. Go listen to your Muggle music tapes in the common room or something.”

“But annoying my brothers in arms is just so much more rewarding,” Sirius persisted.

“My brain is melting,” Peter lamented, running his hands through his hair. “If you’re so bored, why don’t you lend me a hand over here?”

Sirius snorted. “You don’t want me to help, you want me to do all the work _for_ you.”

“You love it,” Peter shot back.

“That I do,” Sirius conceded, never one to turn down an opportunity to make himself feel smarter than somebody else. He rose to his feet and stuck his tongue out at Remus petulantly before he joined Peter at his bunk, and blissful silence finally fell over the room.

Why, oh _why_ had Remus fallen for such an utter child?

**Author's Note:**

> why do i never post things during the day anymore alshskdhdj its always at like 2-3am.......
> 
> i know that no actual teenagers talk like this but the marauders are pretentious little bastards and i love that for them


End file.
